With Energy Awareness Month in full swing, it’s important to recognize all the ingredients of America’s renewable energy recipe
The potential for securing a more sustainable energy future in this country is boundless, and includes many moving pieces. This puzzle is heavily dependent on the available and developing energy technologies, such as wind and solar power that have dominated recent discussions about renewables. But one resource that is markedly missing from these conversations can be found right in your home – your trash.
Trash is an ever-present source, especially in the U.S. On average, Americans throw away 4.7 pounds of garbage each day – which equates to about 254 million tons of waste each year. While recycling and composting have proven to divert some of this waste, landfills and waste to energy remain necessary for housing the remaining waste that can’t be recycled – and using it to produce energy.
Every landfill creates methane-rich landfill gas from the decomposition of organic materials, such as paper, food scraps and wood. Many landfill operators simply flare the gas, but Waste Management has been using the gas to instead generate electricity, supply nearby industrial customers with an alternative fuel source as well as exploring new technologies to create transportation fuels for our fleets.
Landfill gas-to-energy (LFGTE) facilities turn landfills – and our daily waste – into a source of clean, renewable energy. According to the EPA, there were 480 operational LFGTE programs in the U.S. as of December 2008. These generate about 12 megawatts of electricity per year – for reference, the average power consumption of a typical American household over the course of a year is about 8,900 kilowatt-hours. Waste Management alone hosts LFGTE projects at more than 100 of its landfills, with the goal to develop an additional 60 projects by 2013. In expanding these projects, Waste Management will produce enough landfill gas to generate 700 megawatts of energy, enough to power nearly 700,000 homes.
Additionally, landfill gas can be used to create liquefied natural gas (LNG), a clean fuel for vehicles. Waste Management, in a joint venture with Linde North America, will soon create the world’s largest landfill gas to LNG facility in the world, capturing and reusing the gas to produce up to 13,000 gallons a day of transportation grade LNG to fuel the company’s fleet of natural gas powered trash and recycling trucks.
Generating power is only one positive byproduct of LFGTE projects. By capturing and converting the methane organically produced at landfills through the decomposition of waste into energy, LFGTE facilities can also greatly reduce methane and other greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and offsets the need for fossil fuels.
The waste we generate on a daily basis remains a sustainable, indigenous resource in this country, and can serve as an energy resource, even after it has reached the landfill. Amid the vast discussion of possible additions to America’s renewable energy portfolio, we’ve rarely seen any mention of one clear resource that, for the time being, is ever-present: our waste. While the development and use of LFGTE technology may not be the only path to energy independence, it’s certainly something to consider – and a piece of the sustainable energy puzzle that leaders in the waste management industry are finding impossible to overlook.